About Aaron Tester

I first encountered photography as a teenager when my parents gave me a Minolta x370n for Christmas. I didn’t become serious about the craft until I attended Green Mountain College in Poultney, Vermont. There, I earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in creative writing and a Bachelor of Arts, concentrating in photography and graphic design. My subject matter centered on the quarries of the Slate Valley of Vermont and New York, the people who worked them, and their impact on the towns that depended on them. I also created large format photography of the human figure, interpreting the body as landscape. I have continued to explore northern New England, the Canadian Maritimes, and their landscapes and people.

I grew up in the tiny town of Sperryville, Virginia, nestled in the foothills of Appalachia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. There, it was impossible to separate daily life from the landscape in which it was lived. It was an intimate place; a place of stories told on the front porch in the thick summer air, among the song of crickets and katydids. It was a place where, much like the Mountain Music traditions of the region, stories aren’t told, they are given. It’s this foundational experience that has guided me in capturing images of both landscapes and people, and is the genesis of a much broader project: “The Appalachian Hollows Project.” It is a visual anthology of the old homesteads that now reside within the boundaries of Shenandoah National Park in Rappahannock, Madison and Page Counties, Virginia.

I shoot both digitally, on a Nikon d5300, and on film with a Rolleiflex 3.5, Rolleiflex 2.8 in 120 mm format, a Minolta x370n (because nostalgia) and a Зорки -4 in 35mm. All but my color slide and color negative photos are developed in my home by hand, and then scanned for post-processing.